the main page of mapcore

i was asking myself the same question... would be really cool if we could see spotlight maps @the main page again

As far as I remember then news page hadn't been updated for months and I'm sure a lot of people went straight to the heart of Mapcore anyway.

There was hardly any news beyond the job postings, which we replaced with the much better recruitment forums. The spotlight was also rarely updated. All in all, the front page didn't receive much interest and took focus away from where the real activity is: the forums. Indeed, when you came across the front page before it was hardly even apparent there was a very active and fun community behind it — it was just a dull page that looked dead.

MapCore isn't really a site IMO, and hasn't been for many years. It's a community, and so to me that seems like what should be on the front page. Why hide what the site really is behind a boring news page? It's best to keep the forums front and centre, show off the nice active community, etc. We might as well be honest with ourselves: MapCore is a community first, and possibly a news site second. It'll never be the other way round.

The general concept I had in mind was a fairly conventional forum listing on the front page much like we have now, but with the top area much more developed to include a spotlight section, a proper page menu, news headlines, etc. Similar to Interlopers but with more focus on the data coming from the forums themselves.

One idea I do like is basing news headlines on the gaming discussion forum. At the moment we have a cool mix of people posting various news-like threads and more generic gaming discussion, both of which usually generate nice discussion. I think it'd be good if mods could tick the best news-like threads and then they'd appear in the news headlines in a box at the top for everyone to see, thus kind of making everyone a news editor and ensuring news is frequent. An RSS feed and whatnot could be provided too. Perhaps people whose threads are picked often could receive a spotlight-like honour.

All ideas, anyway. I do think something can be done that everyone will be happy with, and I personally wouldn't want to see anything done that'd compromise what works pretty well right now so time needs to be taken to do it properly. If you have any things you'd like to see just post them here. The spotlight is an obvious thing everyone wants to see back.

I'd like to see some kind of splashpage with one row for spotlight screens and one row for screens that are just worth noticing and can be changed on more regular base. Don't merge frontpage and forum. It will just look dull and like the 100.000th "we are so great and babyprofessional" site (imho...).

I don't see how having a standalone page just for the spotlight and some screenshots is a good thing. All it does is make it harder to access the forums and forces people to go to a separate area to view stuff like the latest spotlight gallery. I honestly cannot see why you'd possibly prefer to do that rather than have the spotlight thumbs built into the header so you can see the latest ones every time you visit the forums.

We'll just end up with what we did before, where lots of people bookmark the forum directly and completely ignore the front page. This means less exposure for those featured in the spotlight.

I also can't see why adding some stuff like the spotlight into the forum header would make us look like every other site out there. It certainly couldn't be any worse than we are now, using a mostly default phpBB skin.

Perhaps you're misinterpreting what I said. The front page of the forums would mostly look like it is now: a forum. It'd just also have a nice area at the top for the spotlight, quick headlines that're actually threads in the gaming discussion forum, etc. If it helps, another example of this kind of thing can be found here (although this way too bulky):

http://forums.cgsociety.org/

If anybody asks me about my opinion: I'm tired and slightly frustrated by discussion on this subject, we've had numerous threads regarding the frontpage before - for example those in the moderators section - and the outcome is more or less the same, nevertheless nothing happens. Now this isn't a shot at you Thrik (well, ok, I guess now that you are in charge - it is ) but I've dealt with this since Mojo hell even MIKE was still administrating the site, exchanging mails, pms, opening threads. I'll sit this one out and see if anything actually happens once everyone shared his 2 cents and lost interest after a week

No frontpage needed. Just add the spotlight stuff to the forum index.

There're two reasons I've not made significant moves on modifying the forum front page/index Frie, and those are:

• 
  [*:301eivbn]I've been incrementally streamlining and improving the forums themselves by taking note of features people want and implementing them, culling less active forums, making the recruitment process more understandable, etc. I have spent quite a considerable chunk of time working on the forums during the several months I've had access.
  

  
  

  [*:301eivbn]phpBB3 is still relatively new, and as such I've avoided making major template changes as the first few phpBB3 updates are more likely to interfere with stuff (and indeed they have, resulting in me having to redo various things).

I may be the only one really doing much with the forums in quite some time, but I don't want to annoy people by moving too quickly with changes that people may or may not like. By doing things gradually it's less jolting. It also means I can better gauge reactions to changes.

The next thing I'd like to do is get the spotlight back up there towards the top of the page, pretty much as skdr just summarised. This is clearly the single most in-demand feature. Then once that's working properly and fits in nicely other things can be looked into such as the news (I really like the idea of having headlines based on what people have posted in the gaming discussion forum), and maybe eventually a more unique design.

I know I need to be less verbose. Just making sure you know how things stand. Transparency is good, right?

So far, everytime we've tried to make an interesting front page for Mapcore we failed. LOL. So yeah, I agree with everything Thrik said... Mapcore is a forum community. Not an industry news site.

I am totally fine with Mapcore being the way it is now. We are a community and odds are that a front page would not get maintained properly anyway.

The core has become more of a place to talk about how your day was more than get crits on your maps/ models.

TBH

i agree. it seems like a lot of people hang around just for the sake of hanging around rather than posting content. i'm not saying there shouldn't be a place for that too, but i'd rather have people talk about genuine game design rather than you've just had breakfast or that you bought a new pick for your bass. if you catch my drift.

New themes and fonts? Those are unnecessary additions.

One critical problem with the design discussion is the way our forums are organised. I've been looking at detailed statistics I've been gathering for a few months now, and the overriding message seems to be that we have too many design forums. People are diluted too thinly between them, and a lack of activity in each discourages people to start new threads.

I did suspect this was a problem before I gathered actual data, back when I did the first major restructure/prune of various forums. I considered making changes then but decided not to disrupt people too much and just restructured the more general forums.

I think what I'll do is just go ahead and fiddle with the design forum structure a bit tonight/tomorrow. I think trialling a different arrangement I have in mind could very well increase activity.

Edit: Actually I'll do this next week or so as I'll have more time to actively keep an eye on the changes and their effects.

Can this be the new core logo? I can't stop laughing everyime I look at it. It's just so mapcore.

Certainly!!